The government is considering dissolving a far-right group after it emerged that one of its leading members received a donation in the name of the suspected New Zealand mosque gunman, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Wednesday.
Austrian police on Monday searched the home of the head of the Identitarian Movement of Austria, Martin Sellner, and seized computers and phones after prosecutors discovered that he had received a four-figure sum from a person named Tarrant — the same surname as the suspected Christchurch shooter.
Sellner denied involvement in the attack and claimed he had planned to inform authorities about the donation.
Speaking after a Cabinet meeting, the Austrian chancellor pledged a full and transparent investigation into any possible connections between the Alpine nation and the New Zealand shooter.
“We can now confirm that there was financial support and therefore a connection from the New Zealand attacker to the Identitarians in Austria,” Kurz said. “Our position is clear: no matter what kind of extremism it is, whether it’s radical Islamism or far-right fanatics, must have no place in our country and our society. We will use the full force of the law against this kind of ideology.”
Kurz said anyone found to have committed crimes would be punished.
“Furthermore [we will] examine whether the Identitarians can be dissolved,” he said.
Austrian authorities last week said that the Christchurch shooter visited the nation and Kurz said investigators are now trying to determine “whether there were further contacts between the New Zealand attacker and Austrian citizens” during his trip.
Australian Brenton Tarrant was arrested within an hour of the March 15 attack, in which 50 Muslims were killed in the southern New Zealand city. He has been charged with murder.
Some of Tarrant’s anti-Muslim views are echoed by the Identitarian Movement of Austria.
Austrian Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache said that there would be “no tolerance” for anyone found to have ties to the Christchurch attacker and condemned his “sick ideology.”
Strache’s Freedom Party has itself been linked to the Identitarian Movement of Austria and a photograph showing him and a prominent member of the group in a pub was the subject of a recent court case in Austria.
Strache had sued for defamation, claiming the photograph was a fake, before acknowledging it was real and withdrawing the suit.
“We have adopted clear resolutions in the Freedom Party that anybody who is active in the Identitarians can’t hold any function [in the party],” said Strache, adding that he did not vet everyone who wanted to take a selfie with him.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS